• Dr. Mason Peck
  • Cornell University
  • Holden Auditorium
  • 4:00 p.m.

There is untapped potential for transformative spacecraft missions that use very small, agile satellites. This talk considers the mission-performance benefits and systems-engineering challenges of small length scale from the perspective of attitude-dynamics fundamentals. Violet is a 50 kg agile spacecraft with an optical payload being developed by faculty and students in the Space Systems Design Studio at Cornell University. Dr. Peck will describe Violet’s objectives and system architecture as a case study of this principle and will offer some details on its attitude control subsystem. He will also discuss the design and dynamics of very small control-moment gyroscopes (CMGs). As a nanosatellite, Violet exhibits structural dynamics that are much higher in frequency than larger spacecraft with analogous mission objectives. For this reason, among others, the spacecraft’s eight 0.3 Nm / 0.3 Nms CMGs can be used with comparatively high-bandwidth attitude control to provide extraordinary agility of at least 10 deg/sec, 10 deg/sec^2, and 60 deg/sec^3, with the prospect of as much as four times as much depending on the power available. Mission applications include remote sensing, space situational awareness, and in-orbit inspection and repair of other spacecraft. This general principle, exploiting the dynamics of small-scale vehicles, may motivate even smaller spacecraft. Dr. Peck will discuss some future directions for this research that include centimeter-size spacecraft with surprising orbit mechanics.